Wayne Rooney's seemingly magnetic attraction to controversy resurfaced last night when the Manchester United striker was accused of heaping further ignominy on the England team. He flashed a V-sign at supporters as he boarded the team coach after the 2-0 defeat in Croatia, a performance so abject that it invited mutinous chants of "You're not fit to wear the shirt" and "What a load of rubbish".

The England players were subjected to a stream of invective as they left the Maksimir stadium 45 minutes after the final whistle, directly outside the enclosure where the fans had been kept behind. Rooney is said to have reacted badly to the sustained abuse at a time when he is experiencing his first prolonged slump in form. A TV crew interviewed one supporter at the scene who said he was saddened by Rooney's behaviour and there were further complaints on the team's arrival back in England, with several fans giving their version of events on the Football Association's official website.

"I saw Rooney flash the Vs," Mark Lister claimed. "However, in his defence, he came off the coach and was prepared to listen to one of the fans' constructive comments about us following the team around the world and getting nothing back in terms of passion and commitment. Rooney's reply was 'You come and play then', although I don't think it was said in a negative way."

A spokesman for Rooney said the gesture would have been directed at one fan in particular, who had indulged in offensive name-calling. "Any gesture Wayne may have made was directed at one, and only one, particular fan whose behaviour towards him appalled the other England players who saw it and horrified the rest of the England fans. Wayne has total respect for England's fans. He accepts and understands their disappointment."

The FA declined to comment but it is aware that the allegations are repeated on its forum for members of the official England supporters' club. Another fan, Chris Hounsell, claimed: "It is true. I don't think he was too happy about being abused by the fans as he got on the bus. But surely he can understand the fans' frustrations."

On the contrary, the players seemed taken aback by the hostility. There were also chants of "What a waste of money" and "You're so shit it's unbelievable".

"It wasn't nice to hear the fans shouting things like they did but they travel a long way to watch us and deserve their opinion," said the captain, John Terry. "We do wear the shirt with pride. We just didn't play well. We lost, we didn't put in a good performance and we deserve a lot of the things we get. It's very disappointing and very painful. We need to play much better than that. We just weren't at the races.

"It has been two steps forward and one step back and it is really disappointing we have taken that step backwards. We need to be taking four steps forward rather than two, and really kicking on. The last two results have just not been good enough."

Steve McClaren took the brunt of the criticism, the abuse being comparable to that directed towards Sven-Goran Eriksson after the World Cup qualifying defeat in Northern Ireland. There were shouts for the head coach to resign or "go back to Middlesbrough", and demands for his 3-5-2 formation to be replaced with 4-4-2.

"It didn't look right," Terry admitted. "I don't know what went wrong, really. We changed it late in the second half but the players had felt comfortable with it all week in training, as had the manager."

Gary Neville said: "It was something the manager wanted to do and I could see the merits of that. Everyone will criticise him for playing a different system but if we played 4-4-2 for the next three years everyone would criticise him for not being flexible enough. You can't win."

Winning, however, is all that will interest McClaren when he takes his side to Israel in March for the next 2008 qualifier. To that end, he is already looking at what he can change for the better in the two friendlies scheduled between now and then - away to Holland next month and at home in February. "With my coaches, I have to find out the reasons why we lost and put them right," he said. "We will use the two friendlies effectively and the personnel will maybe have to be different. There are players in the Under-21s knocking on the door and we will be looking at them very, very closely."